Page 116 of Riot Rules
“But you didn’t!” she cries. “You cheated on me!”
The agony in her voice is heart-stopping. Quietly, I begin to unfoldmylies. This…whew, this is gonna be hard. “I didn’t. I paid Amalie to pretend.” So many explanations flit around inside my head. Elaborate, detailed versions of what happened, that paint me in a better light, or downplay Alderman’s involvement. Those explanations are worthless, though. All that matters are the facts. I get them out as quickly as I can, in as few words as possible. “Alderman didn’t think you were safe with the cops looking at Riot House so closely. He wanted to protect you. He asked me to break ties with you. He suggested the method. I went along with it because…because I was stupid, and I wanted to keep you safe. Amalie never touched me. I made it look—”
“Stop.” Carina’s bottom lip wobbles precariously. “You’re lying.”
I wish I was. Things would be a whole lot easier if that were the case. The problem with telling the truth is that, more often than not, it makes life harder instead of easier. It reopens old wounds and makes them bleed twice as hard. But I’ve had enough of keeping secrets now. I’m done with living in the shadows of the compromises I have made to protect the people I love. “I’m not,” I say softly.
Carrie covers her mouth with her hands. In her hospital gown, with flecks of dried blood still peeling off her skin and a cannula jammed into the back of her hand, she looks so fragile and broken. I want to scoop her into my arms. I want to shield her with my body and protect her from all of the words and the people that could hurt her, but it’s already too late for that. All of this time, I’ve been dreading the moment when I confess, expecting her not to believe me. I mean, why would she? It would come across as convenient, after all, that I didn’t betray her trust. But I can tell from the way she’s looking at me now that shedoesbelieve me.
“Get out,” she whispers.
“Carrie—”
“GET OUT!” Her heartrate spikes on the monitor, her pulse climbing. The monitor’s frantic beeping is going to summon a doctor or a nurse any second now. I take one last look at her, hating the mess we’ve created together.
“It’s okay. Don’t worry. I’m going,” I whisper. “But just so you know…Ididlove you back then. So much. Almost as much as I love you now. Bye,Stella.”
55
CARRIE
TWO WEEKS LATER
Some stories don’t get a happily ever after.
It’s hard to accept, but it happens more often than you might think. Some problems are insurmountable, the chasm too wide, the cut too deep.
Alderman eventually shows up at the hospital, and I confront him over what he did. We are family, it seems. Real family, linked by blood via Jamie. His aunt was Jamie’s mother. This whole time, he’s known, and he never said a word. Dressed as always in a crisp, beautiful tailored suit, he stands by the window with his back to me, his shoulders tense, bearing my verbal attack in absolute silence. I curse him. I rage. I use every vile and cruel word I can think of, and it’s still not enough. I tell him that I hate him with every fiber of my being for ruining what I had with Dash, and he doesn’t make a sound. I don’t even know if hewasresponsible, anymore. I don’t know who to blame. Me? Dash? Alderman? Wren? Fitz? Kevin? Jason? My mother? I could close my eyes, throw a rock, and be hard pressednotto hit someone I could point a finger at.
But the blame game? It’s all so…pointless.
My new brother, who I still regard with a healthy amount of suspicion, has plenty to say on the matter. Jamie, who lives in New Mexico on some kind of compound, chews on a toothpick while telling me, “Love makes us all stupid, kiddo. We do the dumbest shit for the people we care about. We lie, we cheat, we steal.” He looks up at the ceiling, as if sifting through memories. “We kidnap. We murder. We commit fraud. We burn down federal buildings—”
“I think you’d better stop there, before you incriminate yourself any further.” I grab my crappy, ultra-lumpy hospital pillow, covering my face with it, and Jamie laughs.
He tugs at the pillow, confiscating it and gesturing for me to sit forward so that he can wedge it behind my back. “All I’m saying is that Mi—” He laughs under his breath. “Aldermandid what he thought was best. Your little British boytoy did what he thought was best.” He raises his eyebrows, silencing me with a look before I can interrupt him. “Youdid whatyouthought was best. None of you wanted to hurt anyone. You all went about it ass-backwards, but your intentions were good. The question now becomes, how do you move past it? Do youwantto move past it? Do you forgive, or do you hold onto the bullshit for the rest of eternity, suffering and feeling like crap because—”
“Alright, alright. You’ve made your point,” I groan. His eyes are nothing like mine. They’re striking, very blue, like chips of ice. His face shape is kind of similar to mine, though. And this is weird, but we wrinkle our noses the same way when we’re thinking. I’ve also discovered that, like me, Jamie is really good at math. Really good. Better than I could ever hope to be. His mind is a lightning-fast computer, processing the most difficult problems and solving them without pause. According to him, the problemI’mfaced with doesn’t require an analytical mind, though.
“It’s simple. You’re being stubborn. And I can say that because we’re family now,” he says, lacing his fingers behind his head. He’s full of tattoos. Full of scars, too. My new half-brother has stories, I’m sure, but I’m still too shy around him to ask for them yet. Jamie doesn’t do shy, though. “Once you’ve gotten your shit together and graduated from that prison up there on the mountain, you’re gonna come stay with me for a while,” he says. “I’m gonna fill you in about our daddy dearest. But, for now, here are the cliff notes. Our father? Not a good dude.”
I already knewthat. He lived in Grove Hill, for fuck’s sake. My whole life, he lived seven miles away, and he never came to see how my mother was doing once. He never even checked in with her to see if I was a boy or a girl. I have no interest in knowing much about him. But Jamie? I think I like Jamie. I will go and stay with him for a while once I’ve graduated. The other part? The getting my shit together part? I don’t know how possible that’s going to be.
I still have to see Dash every day. Graduation is months away. I’ll have spring break to get used to the idea of being around him again, sitting across from him in English, but none of it’s going to be easy.
Elodie visits me every day. She doesn’t tell me so, but I know she comes with Dash. It’s his handwriting I see on the Post-It Notes attached to the pieces of homework she brings in for me. Homework from the classes I share withhim. Jamie flies back to New Mexico. Alderman, whose real name is Michael, I’ve learned, heads back to Seattle. I’m still not speaking to him, but I promise Jamie that I’ll call him eventually, when I’m less mad. Like that’s ever going to happen.
Finally, two weeks after the night I nearly bled out and died, the day arrives for me to move back to the academy. I’m so sick of hospital food, the same four walls closing in around me, and the monotony of life trapped in a bed, that I’m bouncing off the walls, waiting for Elodie to show up and drive me the five miles back to Wolf Hall. I’m equal parts anxiety and excitement when I see the car pulling into the hospital parking lot. Elodie still doesn’t have a car, so she promised to bring my Firebird down the mountain to collect me.
Cyndi, one of my favorite nurses, who used to flirt shamelessly with Jamie when he was here, helps me cart my bags around to the trunk. “Now. What did we talk about? No running. No lifting. No bending. No twisting—”
“No laughing. No breathing. No having fun ofanykind.”
“Alright, smart ass.” She opens the trunk and places my bags inside. “I’m being serious. If you don’t wanna end up back here with internal bleeding—” The driver’s side door slams—Elodie getting out of the car to help. She’s too late, though. Cyndi’s taken care of business. She slams the trunk closed…
…and there stands Wren Jacobi.
He smirks, and a scream builds in the back of my throat. “No. No, thank you. Absolutely not!”
